My chin to the ardent sky. How you never told me about the whiteness
of sunlight. How sunlight contains all colors; all colors mixed up & in
collection, appear white. How this light heavies my eyelids, here in nape
of this rock formation, this snaking trail in the valley of a valley, desert
tongue germinates inside these jaws. How I imagine your hands in weight
upon my shoulders, wrists, ankles, jugular, drawing blood because you
too, contain the spikes & spines & lineage of cacti: short growing season,
long dormancy; one may even think you a ghost, illusion of a wanting
mind, if these ocular cavities didn't resemble a blurred & sepia
photograph, first studied & inhaled moth balls & cedar chests at the age
of sixteen. A photograph in mirror of my ridge of cheeks, slope of nose,
square of my mandible in hold of my infant body tight to your chest; still
a clutch in I ncubation in your arms. How you never told me this light
passes, tangles in the atmosphere & scatters. Smog & dust & particles
reconfigure & the blue, the blue in the light separates most. The blue
hangs the sky, reminds us of pieces & wholes & untetherings. You never
told me. How could you? You coyote, voiceless among the ridge, miles
out from me, in spook if I draw one step closer. You whose face floats
amid the mulberries at twilight, as the firefly abdomens illuminate, then
darken, illuminate, then darken, illuminate, then darken.
